These Easy Make-Ahead Baked Bacon and Cheese Egg Bites Will Make You a Morning Person

Muffin tin egg bites have been popular for a few years now, and we have Starbucks largely to thank for that. It's easy to see why their sous-vide egg bites featuring custardy eggs filled with a variety of savory add-ins have become a popular fixture on their breakfast menu: They’re a perfectly portable, flavorful, and filling breakfast. While we have sous-vide egg bites (like this bacon and Gruyère egg bite recipe) that are loosely inspired by the ones at Starbucks, we also wanted a version that could easily be made in the oven, without a sous-vide machine for those who don't have an immersion circulator or don't feel like pulling it out. 

The recipe below for silky egg bites loaded with savory bacon and nutty Gruyère was developed by our Birmingham-based test kitchen colleague Elizabeth Mervosh, who also created the sous-vide version. Elizabeth fine-tuned the muffin tin version so it's just as silky and satisfying as the sous-vide one. 

When made ahead, these bites can be warmed up and ready to eat within minutes. While the prep and cooking process is fairly straightforward for this recipe, there are a few key elements that Elizabeth incorporated into her recipe to ensure great results.

3 Key Techniques for Silky Egg Bites

1. Add rice starch or cornstarch to the egg mixture to guarantee silky cooked eggs. The added starch in the egg custard acts as a binding agent and coats the egg's proteins, which prevents the proteins from clinging together and setting too firmly, resulting in a creamier and more tender texture. The added starch essentially protects the eggs from overcooking and becoming rubbery. Elizabeth performed a number of side by side tests to confirm that using just a teaspoon and a half of rice starch or cornstarch blended with the eggs made a big difference in the egg bites' final texture. When too much starch was added, the eggs became unpleasantly pasty, and when starch wasn’t added, the eggs were rubbery.

2. Blend the eggs with the cheeses until completely smooth. Using a blender to mix the eggs with the cottage cheese, Gruyère, and Monterey Jack is an easy way to combine all the ingredients. Plus, the sharp blades of the blender also process all of the egg base ingredients until they’re completely smooth, which in turn gives the cooked eggs the best custard-like texture.

3. Use a water bath to bake the eggs. Egg bites baked in the oven can easily overcook and turn rubbery due to the oven’s dry heat. We wanted these bites to be just as silky and custardy as our sous-vide egg bites. To achieve this we needed to mimic the gentle, steady, moist heat of sous vide cooking—we do this by placing the muffin tin in a water bath and cooking the eggs at a low temperature of 325℉. The water bath insulates the egg bites, ensuring steady, even cooking. The water also creates steam in the oven, which prevents the tops of the bites from overcooking or drying out, which we don't want here.

To get the egg bites out of the muffin tin easily, after cooking let them sit in the tin for five minutes before running a butter knife around the edges, then swiftly flip the muffin pan over to release the bites all at once. Once out, they’re great served warm right away for a hungry brunch crowd. But they’re also an ideal make-ahead breakfast option.